In 1951 Princess Elizabeth, with her husband, made her first trip to the US and Canada substituting for her sick father, travelling five weeks through the north Americas. When she touched down in Washington President Truman called her a ‘fairy princess’; British Paramount News filmed a thousand feet of newsreel footage; and the royal couple were widely praised for what they had done for transatlantic relations.
After her accession the new Queen’s first state visit to the USA in 1957 was a fence-mending exercise after the Suez crisis. The Cold War made the special relationship more important than ever. The modernising Prince Philip in particular was aware of America’s importance in trade and technology in these post-War years – but the young Queen herself was also riding high on a wave of popularity.
Her meetings with a long line of US Presidents has continued to be a vital tool of British diplomacy. But on that first state visit in 1957, the Queen asked also to watch a game of American football, to visit a supermarket (still unknown in the UK), and to greet the Manhattan skyline from the sea. ‘Whee!’, she said, on seeing her first skyscraper. Subsequent visits would likewise see her thrilled by things – dining in a restaurant, riding on a bus – she wouldn’t do at home.
The Queen’s younger sister, Princess Margaret, was widely regarded as both the more glamorous and more rebellious of the sisters – the one who, with her hip photographer husband Tony Armstrong-Jones, might be expected to take America by storm. In 1965 Pathe News could film Margaret and her husband boarding the plane for a transatlantic tour.
Besides their formal dinner at the White House, where President Lyndon Johnson cosily addressed Margaret as ‘little lady’, the couple toured both coasts of America meeting stars from both sides of the Atlantic, from Paul Newman to Elizabeth Taylor (who bickered with Margaret over the vulgarity of Liz’s enormous diamond ring). But Judy Garland’s assessment of her was ‘a nasty, rude little princess’; British newspapers complained about the public cost of such ‘jet set parties’. As the official report tactfully put it, ‘they worked and played hard’.
The trip had been intended as a three week charm offensive: in fact, recently released papers reveal that messages received were so mixed, the British ambassador to the States vetoed a follow-up official visit some years later. (Instead Margaret would make a private visit when, finding that they were both staying at the Waldorf in New York, she insisted on meeting her ostracised aunt-in-law the Duchess of Windsor.)
Queen Elizabeth too could sit down with Hollywood royalty, but in a very different spirit: former royal butler Paul Burrell remembers Bette Davis grumbling because the only ones at her dinner table were British-born stars. But maybe the two sisters, Elizabeth and Margaret, were more alike than we sometimes realise?
In 1961 when JFK and Jackie Kennedy visited Buckingham Palace, they – not the middle-aged Elizabeth and Philip – were the glamorous couple. But Elizabeth II would continue to host and be hosted by – and, to impress – US Presidents. Nixon, Ford, Carter – and more recently, Obama, and Trump. In 1991 the Queen’s visit to Washington, where she addressed Congress, came just after the Gulf War, and George Bush said America had come to love her ‘as standing with us for freedom’.
But even the Queen’s official visits to the States can show an unexpectedly humorous side – as when she responded to George W Bush’s misstatement that she had visited in 1776 . . .But, the diplomatic importance of her visits apart, on a personal level Queen Elizabeth too continued to find America ‘the land of the free’, and formed some surprising friendships there. Even at home in England she would listen to the preaching of the evangelical minister Billy Graham whenever he conducted one of his ‘crusades’ to the UK. She would visit him whenever she went to the States, and in 2001 gave him an honorary knighthood.
But America – where the Queen has chosen to spend several of her very rare private holidays abroad – has also allowed her to explore the passion of her life: horse racing. On visits to friends’ ranches in Kentucky, Wyoming and Virginia she would visit the stud farms where her brood mares were serviced (often for free), inspecting stallions and learning to search for mating combinations on a newfangled computer, watching the Kentucky Derby.
The 1980s was the decade of the Queen and the Cowboys. She was so impressed by the gentle techniques of California horse whisperer Monty Roberts she brought him over to the royal stables, and they remained friends. In 1982 she and Ronald Reagan were photographed riding together in Windsor Great Park, and a few months later made a return visit to his ranch at Santa Barbara, braving the pouring rain. It was perhaps the closest relationship she would have with any of the Presidents of the USA – but its beginnings had not been easy.
The initial royal invitation to Reagan had for some time been ignored by the White House, over dispute as to where in Britain – shades of Trump! – the President would and would not be allowed to speak. And the Queen was furious when, just the year after he stayed at Windsor, Reagan ordered the invasion of Grenada, a member of the Commonwealth that recognised the Queen as head of state. But this ‘special relationship’ survived. Another year on, at a Buckingham Palace dinner to celebrate the anniversary of D-Day, Reagan was seated between Queen and Queen Mother. But by then, a different generation was already claiming America as their territory.
